Electronic – single-cycle design using and shared memory for both data and instruction

cpudesigndigital-logic

This is not really a question on electronics , it's more a question on logical design.
I hope this is the right place to ask.

How come it is not possible two use a single-cycle design
and have a single memory for both data and instructions ?

I mean , why it is not possible to access that single memory with the address we find in the pc and then access it again using the address we find in the instruction ?

Thanks

Best Answer

Your question is making some assumptions it shouldn't. However, you have answered this yourself in large part.

In general a memory can do one access at a time. Since fetching the instruction and fetching the operand are two separate accesses at two separate addresses, they must be done sequentially with traditional memories. Even if not, the instruction has to be fetched first before you know that the operation requires a data fetch and then at what address. The logical sequence is inherently sequential.

That said, there are various speedup techniques beyond the conceptually simple scheme of a traditional processor. It would be too long to get into them here, but three that immediately come to mind are caching, pipelining, and separate instruction and data memories. All these are used to various extents in current mainstream products. Real modern processors are no longer as simple as what you are assuming in your question.

For example, most small microcontrollers use a harvard architecture, which means separate instruction and data memories. They can to simultaneous accesses since they are separate memories. However, there is still the issue of having to fetch and decode the instruction before knowing what, if anything, needs to be read from or written to data memory. This is usually dealt with to various extents with pipelining, pre-fetching, and other techniques.

I can't reproduce a whole college level course on computer architecture here, but hopefully I've given you enough keywords so that you can find lots more information on your own.